to decide whether this is not some kind of joke.” 15
With his typical perverseness, Sologub himself was not forthcoming with any explanations. As reticent about the import of
his fiction and poetry as he was about his own person, he seemed to feel that each reader was free to interpret it however
he wished. As far as he was concerned, the introductory paragraph to
The Created Legend
explained all that required explaining:
I take a piece of life, coarse and barren, and from it I create an exquisite legend, for I am a poet. Whether life, dull and
common, stagnates in the gloom, or bursts forth in a raging fire, I, the poet, will erect above you, life, my legend which
is being created, my legend of the enchanting and the beautiful.
Sologub, then, was exerting his will, his creative fantasy over the coarse material of this world and transfiguring it into
something beautiful and divine.
Sologub’s final major prose works,
Sweeter Than Poison
(1912) and
The Snake Charmer
(1921), display little of the willful and exquisite fantasy of either
The Petty Demon
or
The Created Legend
. Both of the later novels deal with the tragic fates of two women, the first a petite bourgeoise and the second a factory
worker. Perhaps as a result of the criticism of his trilogy, Sologub appeared to return to more solid ground in these works.
In
Sweeter Than Poison
we find ourselves once more in a provincial setting where greed, vulgarity and philistinism are rampant among the gentry
and townsfolk. However, Sologub’s last novel,
The Snake Charmer
, is more remarkable in that the heroine of the novel and the “charmer of snakes” is an attractive young girl from the working
classes, Vera Karpunina. She is convinced that she has a holy mission to destroy a “nest of snakes” at her factory—namely,
the factory owners and their toadies. The factory owner becomes hopelessly enchanted with Vera. In return for her favors,
she extracts a promise from him that he will deed the factory to her so that she can then pass it on to the workers. No sooner
does Vera receive the deed than she is murdered by her jealous fiancé who knew nothing of her self-sacrificing designs. Perhaps
this novel represented Sologub’s half-hearted and clumsy attempt to accommodate himself to the Revolution. At the same time,
one must not forget that “democratic themes” were always very much in evidence throughout all of Sologub’s novels.
Throughout his entire literary career, Sologub was prepared to write parodies and satires directed at the Tsarist regime.
But with the outbreak of World War I, he joined the ranks of other writers who put aside their animosities and wrote very
nationalistic and patriotic pieces. He might have been encouraged by the hope that eventually the War would change things
and lead to a more democratic society. In fact, Sologub greeted the February Revolution with very positive feelings and threw
his support behind the Constitutional Democrats and Social Revolutionaries. His stated ideal was that of a “European Humanitarian
Civilization”. However, he was not in sympathy with the October Revolution. Nevertheless he did involve himself in literary
affairs after this Revolution and he became a leading member of a literary faction that called for independence and freedom
in artistic expression. But that faction was short-lived. Together with his wife he joined a professional union of translators.
In March of 1918 he helped to found and then became the first president of a writers’ organization that Was supposed to help
writers live and work during those difficult years of War Communism. Because of disagreements within the organization itself,
Sologub and his wife resigned and practically disappeared from the literary scene. Suffering material and artistic privations
they applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1920. There is disagreement on whether permission was actually granted to Sologub
and
With his typical perverseness, Sologub himself was not forthcoming with any explanations. As reticent about the import of
his fiction and poetry as he was about his own person, he seemed to feel that each reader was free to interpret it however
he wished. As far as he was concerned, the introductory paragraph to
The Created Legend
explained all that required explaining:
I take a piece of life, coarse and barren, and from it I create an exquisite legend, for I am a poet. Whether life, dull and
common, stagnates in the gloom, or bursts forth in a raging fire, I, the poet, will erect above you, life, my legend which
is being created, my legend of the enchanting and the beautiful.
Sologub, then, was exerting his will, his creative fantasy over the coarse material of this world and transfiguring it into
something beautiful and divine.
Sologub’s final major prose works,
Sweeter Than Poison
(1912) and
The Snake Charmer
(1921), display little of the willful and exquisite fantasy of either
The Petty Demon
or
The Created Legend
. Both of the later novels deal with the tragic fates of two women, the first a petite bourgeoise and the second a factory
worker. Perhaps as a result of the criticism of his trilogy, Sologub appeared to return to more solid ground in these works.
In
Sweeter Than Poison
we find ourselves once more in a provincial setting where greed, vulgarity and philistinism are rampant among the gentry
and townsfolk. However, Sologub’s last novel,
The Snake Charmer
, is more remarkable in that the heroine of the novel and the “charmer of snakes” is an attractive young girl from the working
classes, Vera Karpunina. She is convinced that she has a holy mission to destroy a “nest of snakes” at her factory—namely,
the factory owners and their toadies. The factory owner becomes hopelessly enchanted with Vera. In return for her favors,
she extracts a promise from him that he will deed the factory to her so that she can then pass it on to the workers. No sooner
does Vera receive the deed than she is murdered by her jealous fiancé who knew nothing of her self-sacrificing designs. Perhaps
this novel represented Sologub’s half-hearted and clumsy attempt to accommodate himself to the Revolution. At the same time,
one must not forget that “democratic themes” were always very much in evidence throughout all of Sologub’s novels.
Throughout his entire literary career, Sologub was prepared to write parodies and satires directed at the Tsarist regime.
But with the outbreak of World War I, he joined the ranks of other writers who put aside their animosities and wrote very
nationalistic and patriotic pieces. He might have been encouraged by the hope that eventually the War would change things
and lead to a more democratic society. In fact, Sologub greeted the February Revolution with very positive feelings and threw
his support behind the Constitutional Democrats and Social Revolutionaries. His stated ideal was that of a “European Humanitarian
Civilization”. However, he was not in sympathy with the October Revolution. Nevertheless he did involve himself in literary
affairs after this Revolution and he became a leading member of a literary faction that called for independence and freedom
in artistic expression. But that faction was short-lived. Together with his wife he joined a professional union of translators.
In March of 1918 he helped to found and then became the first president of a writers’ organization that Was supposed to help
writers live and work during those difficult years of War Communism. Because of disagreements within the organization itself,
Sologub and his wife resigned and practically disappeared from the literary scene. Suffering material and artistic privations
they applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1920. There is disagreement on whether permission was actually granted to Sologub
and
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